Iran: Hezbollah’s chief backer against Israel
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BEIRUT — Iran, a mainly Shiite Muslim nation whose president visits Lebanon this week, is the ideological and financial backer of the small country’s powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah in its fierce stand against Israel.
Hezbollah, Arabic for the Party of God, was founded in the 1980s under the auspices of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, and speaks often of Tehran’s “political and social support” for it and its activities.
But the United States, which lists Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and Israel, accuse Iran of more tangible support: of feeding weapons to the group through close ally Syria in contravention of a UN Security Council ban.
“In 1982, in the middle of an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, members of the Revolutionary Guard formed the nucleus of Hezbollah in Baalbek (eastern Lebanon), training armed militants, who began operating secretly,” says Wadah Sharara, author of the 2006 book The State of Hezbollah.
“The party grew, and the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) continued training, financing and arming it. They even chose its leaders,” he adds..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101012com3.html
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